ARCHIVE

While Berlin is known for it’s viral startup and art scene, But why there has never been a matching event of Art-related Start-ups with Artists & Creatives. It’s A Match! ‘Oxytocin – Startups mate Art’ is throwing for the first time in Berlin its kind of connecting event night. It’s mission is matching artists and creatives with the right Berlin based startups. Do come and meet your match,
in the NEW SPACE of SOMA.

*The hormone oxytocin has been shown to be associated with the ability to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships and healthy psychological boundaries with other people. Bonding with a partner could have unexpected rewards—in your brain, thus in your life.

The event was held by the request of a private supporter who wishes to held art event at their space. SOMA organized the event at the temporary space, the space does not belong to SOMA’s space.

The Performance Bar is a hub for artists and aims to boost local art scenes around the globe. It’s a place for experiment and dialogue. Where energy is more important than quality. Through an open call anyone can become part of the happening. The Performance Bar blurs the boundaries between café and theatre, bar and stage, artist and audience. What other people say about The Performance Bar: “The original dadaists would be jealous” VICE “a messy, anarchist and anti-elite performance” Theaterkrant (NL) |Duckie L’Orange Jeanette Mansson Rodell BaroqueBitches Titas Dutta and Katarina Markovic Gaby Bila-Günther Alan Meyer Marco Scola Veruschka Bohn Ali Heffetz Rhama Imke Zeinstra Tizo All Suzanne Stavast Florian Borstlap Daan Draait Elle Peril MNHTA Alexandre May| The Performance Bar performancebar.org The Performance Bar is part of WORM Rotterdam. worm.org

The phenomenon of increased “social stress” of city dwellers, less control over interactions with strangers on a daily basis appears bigger than when living in a rural area. Nature may be an antidote, but does it really? Can nature-infused spaces help people feel better in the midst of the city hustle?
Since the trials to reinvent nature and denounce urbanism in the 18th century, there has been no shortage of movements, practices that advocated getting back to nature. Yet despite the advocacy, celebrating urbanism has more flourished and inspire humans toward their greatest endeavors in art and science. Currently, over half of the world’s population lives in cities, and that number is expected to grow to over 66 percent of humans everywhere by the year 2050. What Living in a City or in Nature Does to Your Brain?
‘The Brain of Nature vs. Urban Jungle’ explores the phenomenon
landscape of Nature and City. What are the forces behind the visual appearance of individual landscapes of Nature vs. City. What exactly is landscape and how the aspect of intentionality purposefully designed as artworks? The visualized cultural landscapes of Nature and City will contrast which social or/and natural circumstances have shaped them and exploitation of territories for the necessities of human existence.
‘The Brain of Nature vs. Urban Jungle’ will present time-sensitive,
time-based, site-specific artworks with various mediums. The exhibition will contrast the artistic practices between the Swiss artists raised and/or born in strongly nature-infused circumstances thus have been working tightly with their landscapes, to the artists of Berlin with their main focus as its cityscape.

Gender: is it an identity or a meta-category?
Innate or learned? Binary or infinite?
Modern or outdated? Necessary or not?

No matter what one holds as true, each individual in society must reckon with their own and others’ conceptions of what gender is and how to express it. And this imperative is never static: how does one negotiate across the various perceptions of others and self with one’s own contextualization of gender? How is this negotiation framed in culture(s), intergenerational relationships, family structures, religious experiences, bureaucratic and institutional settings, with medical professionals, or amongst friends, strangers, and colleagues? In short, how does one exist within (or perhaps outside) the bounds of an ascribed “gender?”

This two-evening event brings together a variety of performance artists from diverse experiences – all from different backgrounds but all reckoning with the concept of “gender.” Drawing on their experience curating the series Yes/No/Other/All: Performance on the Boundaries of Identity, artist and organizer Darling Fitch will bring artists together to express their own individual theoretical conceptions of identity, to present a multi-faceted view of what gender does, or could, mean.

Central to the event will be the final two performances of Fitch’s own year-long performance project, ‘A Stranger Sound’.
From the official description:
Arising from the cesspool of Berlin’s queer party scene, A Stranger Sound is a dark yet ultimately affirming transgender coming-of-age story. A Stranger Sound is a full length live show combining music, spoken word, and performance art to take the audience on a journey through “gender dysphoria and chemical ecstasy // chemical dysphoria and gender ecstasy… And glamour as a survival strategy.” The show examines many elements of queer space: community, self-discovery, safety… But also addiction, escapism, narcissism, abuse, and self-harm. It is an honest account of the spaces we call home.
With performances planned over the span of performer Darling Fitch’s first year of testosterone therapy, vocal drops and physical changes will be evident from performance to performance, particularly through the juxtaposition of live and pre-recorded vocals. In this way, A Stranger Sound tells an ongoing story, and physically as well as thematically reveals the ever-changing nature of life.

The goal of the evenings is to make audiences aware of a multiplicity of ideas regarding gender and its expression, and to encourage them to engage with, examine, or expand upon their own internal beliefs and ideas about the concept and execution of gender.

“The Life & Death Of Elle Peril” presents a five-year experiment on persona. In the wake of revenge porn and cyber harassment, Lena Chen suffered from post-traumatic stress symptoms (depression, anxiety, paranoia, and hypervigilance) which impaired her ability to function socially and professionally. In 2013, she moved to Berlin and invented an alternate identity as nude model Elle Peril. Through ritualized acts of undressing and posing for (mostly male) strangers, Elle Peril functioned as a coping mechanism, survival tactic, and form of ad hoc therapy allowing the artist to reclaim agency over her body and personal narrative.

Lena Chen explores gender, identity, and trauma through text and performance. Since 2008, an anonymous Internet stalker has harassed Chen, her family, friends, and associates using tactics such as “Google-bombing” and doxxing. As one of the earliest documented cases of revenge porn and cyberstalking, her experience has been studied by academic researchers and covered in the press.

Chen received a degree in sociology from Harvard University in 2010. As an activist for reproductive freedom and women’s rights, she has been featured in mainstream media outlets and invited to speak at Oxford, Yale, Stanford, and SXSW. She is based in Berlin, where she curates participatory art projects and organizes events on creative activism.

“The Life & Death Of Elle Peril” is part of the long-term curatorial project ‘Yellow Matters’ by SOMA Art Gallery Berlin and is supported by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Berlin (Senate Department for Culture and Europe Berlin).

“If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade” is a powerful maxim that encourages an optimistic attitude in the face of adversity or misfortune. Since moving to Berlin in 2009, interdisciplinary visual artist kate-hers RHEE’s work explores the intersections of race, gender and cultural identity specific to language and nation. In this solo exhibition, she presents work that confronts disparaging racist and sexist German colloquialisms, while deflating them with humour and wit. “If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade” is often used by women, women of colour and recently quite famously referred to by Beyoncé in her iconic music album Lemonade with a direct quote from Hattie White, Jay Z’s grandmother. Born in Seoul, kate-hers RHEE was raised in the racially segregated suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. Her interdisciplinary work reflects the complex nature of miscast identity, cultural dislocation, and gendered interactions. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the University of California – Irvine, where she was a Graduate Studies Diversity and Jacob K. Javits fellow. RHEE’s work has been shown nationally and internationally with recent exhibitions and interactive projects at the Art Space One – Seoul (2016-17), Asian Arts Initiative – Philadelphia, PA (2017), Seoul Art Space SEOGYO (2017), British Museum – London (2016), Asian Art Museum – Berlin (2016-2017), and the Neuer Berlin Kunstverein (2016). RHEE was a recipient of the Berlin Visual Artist Fellowship in 2016.

‘If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade’ is part of the long-term curatorial project ‘Yellow Matters’ by SOMA Art Gallery Berlin and is supported by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Berlin (Senate Department for Culture and Europe Berlin).

Phuong Tran Minh was born in Hanoi / Vietnam, raised in Germany has studied at the University of Potsdam.
Her work is based in the field of documentary photography, moving between post war issues, artistic portraits and landscape photography. Her first exhibition with „Tomorrowland“, a series about young Agent Orange victims, was made public in Paris (2015). ‘RUSH’ is part of the long-term curatorial project ‘Yellow Matters’ by SOMA Art Gallery Berlin and is supported by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Berlin (Senate Department for Culture and Europe Berlin).

(EN)
Spending about one and a half year at gas stations, rest stops and side-strips, with a thumb up, often with a destination suggesting cardboard sign in front of the thorax, I roamed the German autobahns from north to south to east to west and always amidst life.Numerous people gave me a lift and decided to share some time with me in a limited space. Thus, many miles slipped away under fast moving tires, many hours have been filled up with caught up sleep, nice chats, deep talks and common silence. Like bloodcells we flowed over the veinous roads, from time to time we got stuck in a traffic thrombosis. At least our conversations went on. Some dialogues were silent as breathing at the Baltics, some as deep as the tunnels running through the Alps and some accompanied by mutual laughter.
The images oft he landscape, the sky, the traffic lanes which passed by the car windows were too intriguing to let them just flash by and vanish. Thus, I captured them with my camera. The visual poems displayed on the passenger’s window needed to be written down and I was eager to make notes for others to read them.
Regarding a rush in stillness, regardless oft he time passing by on the right.

14.-25.04. 2017
Grace Euna Kim’s performances are immersive contexts developed in close connection to the social reality of the audience, who are both subjects and objects of artistic action. Rooted in interventionist methodologies, the work challenges the imaginary mechanisms that shape our common belief structures and the relation of self, other, and world. ‘A window and a street’ invites the audience into a collective reflection on the cages of the imagination and the absurdity of our human condition.

‘A window and a street’ is part of the long-term curatorial project ‘Yellow Matters’ by SOMA Art Gallery Berlin and is supported by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Berlin (Senate Department for Culture and Europe Berlin).http://somagallery.de/

Does a house always mean ‘Home’?
How do we each personally define home? How closely is one’s home related to the architecture of a house itself? A house may take on different appearances in different nations, places and circumstances, and in its physical form, a house will tell personal stories and offer indications of social status. Fascinated by the form of apartment blocks from the ‘Plattenbau’ of Berlin to the tenthouses of Africa and China, Tian Tian Wang has been searching for the universal meaning of home through the dwellers in her works. Tian Tian Wang was born in Qingdao, People’s Republic of China, and has studied creative painting at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Frankfurt am Main. She was awarded by the Goldrausch Programm in Berlin, and has presented her works in venues worldwide, including at the 53rd Venice Biennale. For her solo exhibition at SOMA, she will present ongoing works on homes including new paintings inspired by her recent trip in Africa within the ‘Yellow Matters’ Programm.
The long-term curatorial project ‘Yellow Matters’ by SOMA Art Gallery Berlin is supported by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Berlin (Senate Department for Culture and Europe Berlin).

Wu Zhi ( Sichuan, CN / Berlin) pushes the conceptual boundaries of traditional portrait painting and drawing. Her artistic work, both classically rendered and theatrically composed, examines the complexities of the migrating experience as an Asian woman.
The twisted mortality revealed in the tension between social and psychological transformations endured by her subjects.
Wu Zhi will show her self- portraits of the last 15 years since she immigrated to Europe.